#105 Ryan Maguire - WYLD RYDE Outdoors
Ryan Maguire - is an extreme athlete and ancestral skills instructor, focused on living and thriving in the outdoors. Ryan is well-versed in survival skills and extreme outdoor living, having experienced living in every climate type of North America. Constantly pushing physical and psychological boundaries, Ryan has traveled long-distance, remote wilderness trips barefoot through every type of terrain, including snowy glaciers. He is a hybrid athlete that competes on the national stage, while also making time to frequently undertake ultra-distance solo trips, consistently spending consecutive long days running with minimal gear, food, and water. Ryan's escapades have led him to live in rocky mountain caves during the winter, desert canyons in the summer, and everywhere in between. Ryan is the host of the podcast "Who the WYLD Things Are" and owns the outdoor adventure company @WYLD_RYDE_OUTDOORS. Tune in as Ryan Maguire joins Bobby Marshall in the studio to discuss wilderness survival, bushcraft, Colorado, life lessons, wildfires, obstacle course racing, life lessons, mountain life, and so much more.
Please subscribe or like us on social media platforms for updates on shows, events, and episode drops.
www.themountainsidepodcast.com
Sponsor Links:
Mountain Side listeners receive 10% off all Jocko Fuel products! Use Code TMS10 to save.
Mountain Side listeners use Discount code TMS to receive 10% off ONNIT products!
Mountain Side listeners receive 10% off Origin & Jocko Fuel products! Use Code TMS10 to save.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Ryan Maguire - WYLD RYDE Outdoors
Our guest for this episode is Ryan Maguire. He is a high endurance athlete competing in Spartan, Hyrox, and obstacle course races around the country. When Ryan is not competing, he spends the majority of his time living off the land in the backcountry using primitive survival skills. He is also the host of the podcast, Who The WYLD Things Are. He is a unique human who enjoyed sitting down and doing this episode with me. He got an interesting outlook on life, and I hope that you enjoy our conversation.
Ryan, thanks for coming in.
Thanks for having me.
We had our interview fairly early in the morning. I'm not going to lie. We had some whiskeys at 8:00 or 9:00. Hunter McIntyre was one of those. When you walked in, you saw the builder over there.
Hunter is a good dude. We connected in 2021. I came into this OCR, Hyrox world, by accident. I had some residual fitness from being in the bush, like mountain fit-type stuff. I settled down more in Colorado, and Hunter was here doing one of his competitions. It is called OCR Stars. I don't know if you have heard of that. We went out and did a workout together. That dude is a monster.
He is a beast. He won the world title. The only thing I can say is that when I raced against him or at the world championship, I got second in the world on this sled push. I did not do that well, but for this one item, I got second in the world. I was like, “I can hang my hat on that. Who beat me?” I look it up. Sure enough, Hunter McIntyre.
He holds the world record or something like that.
World record and the world title. He is a monster. Don't tell him that. He doesn't need to hear it.
He is a great dude. We have enjoyed having him here. Anytime hanging out with Hunter is a good time. We went to a concert together. It was fun. We helped promote the Hops Drops Evergreen. I had never seen The California Honeydrops. They were amazing. At one point, the drummer came out, and he had a washboard around his neck and was playing the washboard for three songs. It was him and the lead singer. I can't remember his name. It might be Ryan. It was incredible live. You can listen to their recorded stuff, but it's nothing. They are one of those bands you have to see live, and the whole vibe and atmosphere are super cool.
My buddy turned me onto them. I was living in California, and I heard about them. He plays a washboard. I thought that was the laundry.
They have a New Orleans influence where it is like jazz and R&B, but they also have like a reggae influence a little bit too. It isn't considered an actual instrument, but it came from that region of the world, that deep South Bayou, Louisiana-type stuff. Maybe they had a banjo and washboard. Somebody started playing the washboard at some point.
Is it percussion or guitar?
I was never in the music business for many years. I can name all the instruments or whatever, but you know those wooden scratch things. He has some things on his fingers.
That is groovy. He is getting down on that thing. It's got a little snare drum feel to it. He was bongoing it. That is pretty sick.
He got fingerpicks, too. He picks it differently and with different fingers. He was on that thing for 15 to 20 minutes jamming with the acoustic guitar. These guys are pretty cool. They started in a bus station out in Oakland, outside the Bay. Now they are playing all these stages all over the world.
They were a BART band. I lived in the Bay Area for a while. The BART will make a man out of you. There is some wild shit that goes down there.
I have spent a lot of time in the Bay Area, but not so much in Oakland. I dibbled dabbled over there a little bit .
That is where I bought the truck that I lived in, the first one. I called it Lady May. I bought it in the East Bay. I always have a fond memory of that place, even if it's got some rough edges.
You mentioned that you lived here for a little while, in the town where we are right now, which is Evergreen, which is pretty cool. I grew up here. Where did you grow up? Let's dive into your background a little bit.
I moved around a ton as a kid. You can hit one of the places I lived with the baseball from right here. If you went on the porch out there and chucked it up this mountain that we are next to, you could hit my house. It would probably knock it over. The house is a piece of crap. I will never say which one because I don't want to offend anyone, but it got some rough edges.
It's a $750,000 piece of shit right now.
It is an expensive piece of crap. We lived here as kids. I was thinking about some stories. My dad used to drop us off the back porch, and you know as well as anyone there are tons of elk here like nowhere else you will go. They are constantly in your yard and coming up to your door. He used to drop us off the back deck into elk shit. It sounds disgusting now and you would get child abuse for it. Back then, it was pretty funny. It was a little game we played. I lived here. I grew up and lived a lot of my life in Ohio. I’m a barefoot creek kid. I loved to fish, play sports, and be outside.
You grew up exactly as I did then when I was living here because I spent so much time in that river and chasing elk around and doing stupid stuff that a kid does, up to no good, rolling rocks down hills and mountain living.
I am still that way. I got away from it for a little bit. You get these classical conditioning situations where it's like, “You are good at X, Y, Z. You should pursue your life this way.” I bought into some of that. You have a natural propensity because you're good at something, but you don't ultimately enjoy it. My life has taken a few different turns, but my passion has always been this outdoors movement, being in the bush, coming face to face with bears, looking for animals, going fishing, and being barefoot. That is what I do.
You get these classical conditioning situations where it says you’re good at X, Y, Z, so you should pursue your life this way. You have a natural propensity because you're good at something but don't ultimately enjoy it.
When did you move out of here, and where did you go?
I moved from here to Texas and Ohio. I moved to eight different houses in Ohio. I moved to California. I lived in fifteen houses. After that, I moved into a truck and lived in another twenty states. I have bounced around my whole life.
Was your dad in the military or something?
No, that's always the question.
The typical military kid moves around like that.
I spent most of that time in Ohio. The majority of those years. Even there, we were moving around a lot because he was bored. I probably get some of that. I'm not good at chilling. I'm not a good person to hang out with and do nothing. I'm not that guy. I'm always moving, bouncing, and wanting to do something. My relaxation only comes after I have run in the mountain, done this, and got something else done. I have a hard time chilling. A lot of the stuff you see online that I share now is this journey I have becoming chill, trying to sit down for 10 to 30 minutes a day and do breathwork and meditation because that stuff does not come naturally at all.
I have a hard time meditating. It's not my jam. It’s not that I don't think it's not beneficial. I just don't want to do it. I don't want to sit there like much like you. I value time preciously. I rather spend it shooting my bow, hiking up a mountain, or doing something like that to disconnect or reconnect with nature. When I sleep, I sleep. That is the only downtime. We sit in here, but this is fun. This is intriguing. This gets the brain going. We can have a whiskey. It's like hanging out at the bar. Other than that, I get where you're coming from with that. I'm not knocking meditation. It's good for anybody. I do it in different ways.
There is that dynamic meditation thing, like you are saying, shooting a bow. I always consider that when I go out and shoot. I was just at Bear Creek. It's pretty rad. You can take your shirt off and get some sunshine. I was barefoot.
I have never been down there. There is a bunch of hay bales set up, and you can shoot at 30 or 40 yards.
They have 4 at 10, maybe 3 at 20. They go out to 50 or 60. It's relatively not crowded. There is a $10 entry fee. That might bounce a lot of people out. They were like, “Find a free spot to shoot.” I'm driving up, I'm like, “It is about to storm. Good for me. Everyone is going to leave the archery range.” I like running in the rain. I'm like, “I will go for a run, shoot, and do my thing.” I see on the left side of the horizon, and the fire starts. I'm like, “Shit.” I got into Bear Creek. I ran towards the fire. It was getting bigger, and the engines were going off. I'm like, “We were doing good this year.”
The last couple of episodes we recorded was with a wildland firefighter. He is retired now. It is eye-opening. It is crazy how fast something can go and how fast it can go up, especially around here. There is a national fire website thing that tells you about fires and containments. I was trying to look it up because I have family that lives close to there. I was trying to make sure that they were all good. We had one several years ago right here on Elephant Butte. I don't know if you are familiar with that, which is an open space area. It's pretty rough. That was a pretty big scare.
Most of Evergreen got evacuated. Downtown Evergreen, that whole bit, got evacuated, and it burned for a couple of days. Luckily, we got some rain, and they threw some pretty heavy machinery at it. There were some huge helicopters picking up water from the lake. I was getting stuff out of my house. I figured we were going to get evacuated because I could see the fire from my house. The helicopter path was flying over my house, and they were dumping water. It was the residual water from dumping it on the fire. It was raining at my house from the helicopters going by. It was every five minutes. I got an epic video of it.
That is part of living up here. That is why people need to pay attention to fire bans, number one, especially if they are camping. Almost 60% of wildfire is naturally caused. Whether it is a lightning strike or something like that, and the other 30% are human error, whether it's a power line that went down or cigarette butt. How many times have we seen the side of the highway burning here? Glenwood Canyon is a great example right there.
It can be the butt, and it can also be metal dragging, oftentimes with trucks. You are going to have shrapnel scraping against that concrete, and that's going to send sparks. A lot of what I teach in my courses is fire safety. It has ramped up in the last several years with the increase in forest fires. We are not going to go in the other direction. It's going to continue to be more fires.
There is a real education gap. A lot of the fire bans are well-intentioned. We are saying, “Don't have a fire, or if you do have a fire based on this ban, it needs to be in a circle.” The issue is that we have people that have this false sense of confidence like, “I have a fire here. It is in a ring. I'm good.” It is not the reality at all. We need to understand wind and what debris is circling that fire. You need a five-foot ring of mineral earth. We don't want anything to be touching that fire ring that could possibly catch a falling spark or ember and start a fire.
WYLD RYDE Outdoors: A lot of the fire bans are well-intentioned. The issue is we have people with this false sense of confidence like, “I have a fire here, and it's in a ring. I'm good, right?” Which is not the reality at all. We need to understand wind and what kind of debris is circling that fire.
There are a lot of these small issues that could be prevented with more education. We touch on it, but not everyone is going to take a wilderness survival course. Hopefully, there are some more government funds that go towards true education in this matter because it is going to become a bigger issue over the next couple of years.
You are sitting in camp, and if you are having a fire, a lot of the pine and stuff that burns around here. You put a little too much on, and those cinders start to fly up in the air. If it is windy, it will carry it. It is not like you're going to be able to catch it or run over there and put it out. That is a big deal. The trees pop, the sap starts to bubble and expand, and it pops the wood.
A lot of people will be digging small holes for their fire rings, and you can have roots underground, which will hold onto heat.
They can smolder for up to a year. Some of those fires down in Florida smolder for a year before they consider completely out, which is wild.
Put your hand in the fire, and if it goes out, it is not out yet. This is two hours after I saw it start because I was coming down the road when it was starting. It was tiny, and I was like, “This is going to get out of control quickly.”
It can happen fast. Luckily, it wasn't too windy. It can get considerably much windier here. If you get all the right scenarios, you can be in a bad situation in a hurry.
We have all conifers forests. You have soft wood. That is going to go up in flames a lot faster. It's got a lot higher oil continents inside it. These things burn fast and hot. It is something you got to look for, but it is not a reason not to go to the bush. Part of what we are dealing with is how we deal with fire bans responsibly as outdoor educators.
I'm leaving. We are doing a 28-day course down in Utah. We will be on the land for 28 days, no phone, no nothing. I and two other instructors, and a class of students. We are ultra-primitive. You are relying on fire to cook your food and sometimes to keep you warm at night. Ultimately, we are at the hands of the BLM and whoever has a say and the authority in those areas. We have to figure out, “I'm supposed to teach you how to make a friction fire, but we can't make a friction fire, or maybe we can depending on the fire ban.” We are constantly working with local agencies and figuring out the best way to handle that stuff.
What happens if you do enter a fire ban? Do you guys cancel the class at that point?
We make do. I lived in spots out in the bush solo with fire bans, gone without fires, and made do. You got to plan differently. You got to have more insulation at night when you are sleeping and have a different food source.
That’s got to be difficult. Fire is the main thing. It always seems like now, when I go elk hunting in September, we can't have a fire. I'm cooking on propane, butane, or something like that, depending on whether I'm at base camp or a spike camp. It's not the same, but I understand it. I try to follow the rules. You don't want to be that guy.
There are situations that have happened when people have lit emergency fires for good reasons to save someone's life. There are legit reasons. We are trying to enjoy the bush in the best way possible. We are trying to take care of it. I lived not far from here in a cave and had an Al-Qaeda on the ground. I had the fireplace that I built into this little rock, and the fire kept me alive. There is no arguing about it. Without the fire, I would die. When I hear people getting angry about no fires, I'm like, “It's 60 degrees at nighttime, and you are sleeping under the stars. What do you need the fire for right now?” There are times when the fire is super necessary.
It's not survival because you're in a badass like Patagonia sleeping bag or a NEMO tent. You have all this gear, and maybe you are in a camper. It's enjoyable to sit around a campfire. Watch it and be in the middle. It's relaxing.
It is primal. When you stare deep into that fire, you know there is something deep inside of you that has been doing this for a long time.
I brought this up on our show. If you look up some of the native traditions of it, it is super cool. You can go down a huge rabbit hole in the spiritual meaning of fire. Some of these tribes, I think it was the Piikani tribe, and I mentioned this in the last episode, they had started fires that their ancestors carried on. They never let the fire go out. It was that sacred.
The fire was always burning. They were nomadic, they were chasing buffalo, their food source, or whatever. When they left, whatever region they were in, they would take the fire with them. They would take a buffalo horn and wrap it in clay. They had all these different layers. They would put little pieces of wood in it. They would sit in there and smolder.
The warriors or the most looked-up guys in the tribe, the hunter-gatherer, were complete savages. They would run 50 to 60 miles to find a new camp and start the fire there. They send smoke signals, and the tribe would go there. Their whole thing was that the fire never goes out. When they would leave the old place, they purposely set a fire because they know that is what rebirths an area. If you have been in a burn area or something like that, animals love to be in there, especially big game animals, because of all the nutrients from fresh vegetation, weeds, and all that stuff. There is a bunch of medicinal plants too. You could probably tell me more about those that come up right after a burn.
There are a lot of different plants that have to come through a burn cycle, like big plants, small plants, trees, and redwoods, for example. They only grow out of burns. Here, we are not 100% sure why the elk like the burn so much. We haven't been able to track exactly what they are eating there. We know that the elk are found heavily in the burn areas. I'm sure, as a hunter, you have seen that.
Back on the native thing, I have been reading a lot about the Paiutes. The way they would keep the fire going is that the firekeeper was almost a religious, spiritual figure. There would be a disconnection if all three of us were in charge of keeping the fire going for the next month. Someone is going to sleep. Accidentally, we are all asleep together at the same time, and it goes out. The fire goes out quickly. If you have ever slept next to one, you know that.
The Paiutes kept the fire going by having a firekeeper who was almost a religious or spiritual figure.
Especially if it's raining, snowing, or any of that sort.
This guy had a responsibility, and he was a tenured individual in the tribe that would be revered as a spiritual figure. I always thought that was cool, like how important the person keeping the fire was. You would think like, “That sounds like an arduous detail-oriented position where he is got to stay focused on it.” They don't think of it like that. They had high reverence for the person keeping the fire.
The higher end of the hierarchy in a tribal community. Those guys had to carry that and make sure it didn't go out.
The running thing is a cool part of that.
This is like primitive ultras.
It's like, “Where is this coming from?”
This is in the Northern Rockies going in. They would migrate into Canada, come back down, and do this cycle. You are talking about glaciated peaks. Jeremy sent me a video. It was like a summer avalanche that I had never seen.
Is it the slide that came down from that valley? We did this double fourteen. We are on a slide like that. I came back and got back here to Colorado. I looked at my phone, and somebody sent me that. I'm like, “What if that was the same slide?” You can look at the conditions. They are similar. You never expected it was coming down like that. Look at what that looks like.
That is summer. Do we know where this was at?
That is in Alaska.
I don't know. The guy got an accent. I'm not sure.
Luckily, he had that little shelf right in front of him.
I wonder what happened to him.
This is a coincidence but look at those mountain conditions. Go to that video I posted, and I was like, “You need to be careful.” I'm always out here doing this shit. It is too dangerous.
You have to be educated in some of that, too, especially if you are in backcountry snowboarding, skiing, or anything like that.
Look at that peak. That is a fourteener right there. On the 4th and 5th cliff, we walk over a snow slide like that. I didn't show the cliff because my mom would have freaked out. I slipped down. I had to punch in with both my hands to stop myself. That is the exact same slide. Before he took that video, I started sliding down. I had to donkey punch in and stopped myself. It's a little sketchy sometimes, but that was a cool trip there. It is a beautiful country.
I love being up there, man. It's so cool.
Colorado is shit.
From moving around, did you purposely come back here because of everything that you did as a kid? What was the catalyst where you came back to Colorado?
Have you ever heard Kenny Chesney’s song? It is called American Kids.
I don't listen to country that much.
I don't either, but for some reason, I like this song. He was like, “Mommy and daddy put the roots down here because this is where the car broke down.” That is what happened. I was living in a truck. I was traveling all over. Donny and I were teaching some courses down in Mexico. I went over to San Diego and went on a surf trip. I was bouncing all over. My truck was a 1993 Ford F-250. The transmission went out near Grand Junction. I had a bunch of families here. I was like, “I'm going to settle in Colorado for a while.” I have been here for several months. I will be in the bush for the next few months in Utah and Western Colorado.
How did you link up with Donny? That is who connected us. Shout out to Donny Dash. Thanks for putting this together, man.
It was some formulation of us seeing each other's stuff and Instagram. I reached out to him, and we became friends. I was living in the truck, spending a lot of time in Colorado. I was here for the snowboarding season. I was living in this cave. Donny was like, “Do you want to come to teach a course with me?” I'm like, “Sure. It sounds great.” That course ended up getting canceled, but we planned some more down in the Chihuahua Desert. We went down there and taught some courses. That was great. We have been friends since then.
He has been a great friend to us here, a salt of the earth. I love having him in here. He is a good person.
He got some of that old-school spirit in him. He has a good head on his shoulders. I try to explain this to a lot of my friends. There is this misconception right about primitive survivalists. They would be dumb bush hippies. They reject society and aren't intelligent. Consider a modern topic like finance. It's finite. There is this much to learn about finance. Learning plants is this big. That is one small part of living in the bush.
The knowledge base you have to have is expansive. It is massive that you could never even learn 100x100-foot square. You can never even, in your lifetime, understand all of the natural systems that happen in a 100-foot square. People have this idea like, “He is probably a dumb caveman.” No, Donny is smart. He got a great head on his shoulders. I'm sure you have seen it. If you have talked with him, you are like, “This guy is smart.” He is not a brunt bruiser, and he is a big dude, but he is a smart guy, and he understands a lot of life philosophies that you wouldn't expect.
I couldn't agree with you more, and there is so much more to it. We had multiple people, including yourself, Donny, and Orion Aon. Are you familiar with him? Forage, Colorado.
Does he do the edible plants?
He does all kinds of stuff. He is an elk hunter too. He is more about foraging, taking that home, and turning it into something more on the chef's side of stuff. He is a super cool guy and knowledgeable, too, when it comes to all that. He has dedicated himself to understanding that and also sharing it, which is cool too. There is so much to that, and I have learned so much from Donny specifically or some of these other guys like Orion Aon.
We take a lot for granted, and I wasn't open to all of that, or I did take it for granted until I had the show and started talking to some of these guys. It is always something that interests me. I was elk hunting last 2021. I wish I knew more about mushrooms because I crossed probably 25 different species. I didn't end up taking any of them that I didn't recognize.
That is a good move. Mushrooms are dangerous, especially if you are unfamiliar. It has a lot higher toxicity than most plants. You can catch yourself in a bad spot in the backcountry.
That whole foraging side of stuff and being able to know that you're self-reliant in your own environment, what is out there, and what you can eat. I have dialed it back in the last several months to a primitive diet. I'm strictly eating meat pretty much right now. I'm waiting to get some blood work back, but I would like to add back in some local self-harvested.
Every time Donny is in, he keeps talking about dandelion roots like the tubers and that stuff. I have eaten dandelion before, but it would be cool to get a bit more on the forage side and add that back into the diet. I'm sticking to what I do, but there is some variety rather than eating steak all the time, which is fucking great. Don't get me wrong.
I'm all on the steak train for sure. You can probably pull it up here. I did a video of my bush pizza as I like to call it.
I did see that. That was one of the things I was going to ask you about.
I eat a lot of wild foods, and I have been working as a wild game butcher. I eat a ton of meat and fruit. I love fruit. I’m obsessed with it. I don't know why. Something inside of me craves fruit, but I eat a lot of plants and plant medicine-type stuff. A lot of times, I like to run. Getting carbs can be tough in the bush. You are looking at things like underground storage organs or tubers, anything that is growing under the ground. You can find some good carbs and fruit that way. I will bring a little bit of basic bread. That is flour and water. I cook it right on the coals. I call those ash cakes. You take the dandelion. You said you had eaten dandelion.
I have eaten the leaves before. I have never eaten the actual flower, but that is what you are eating here.
If you take the flower and eat it whole, it's going to taste like shit. If you take the little green part that holds the yellow, you take that green part off. The yellow part is amazing. It tastes super sweet, like it's a good sweet green. You throw that on a little mini pizza and get yourself a little meal. You can eat the leaves. I eat the leaves. If you are eating the leaves on the dandelion, you want to make sure you get the younger ones right because the older ones are going to get a little bad flavor. If you can find some fresh ones there, they are solid.
That is a natural antiacid too. If you are having heartburn or any of those symptoms, it knocks it out. That and peppermint, for some reason.
It is crazy, all the powerful plant medicines that are out there that exist. There is a resurgence of all that is coming back now, whether it be plants or fungi. People are using dandelions for cancer. That sentence alone blows most people's minds. You hear about things like turkey tail mushrooms. If you take those with modern medicine, which is going to destroy the immune system but ultimately fight disease well, turkey tail mushrooms can dramatically increase your immune system's ability to fight, AKA white blood cells, during that chemotherapy period. We are seeing these amazing uses, and it's not like, “Bush hippies eat planets and fungi.” This is science. A lot of coming back to the earth is the real answer.
I wanted to dive into some more of that with you because it has been a while, and I'm pretty sure it's you that shared some natural sunscreens. One of the things I hate to do is lather myself in sunscreen or bug spray. Those are the two most grimy feelings to be in the wilderness. You posted something about that. You were on a run or something. Can you dive into a little bit of that and what you use?
I brought you a present. This is from our gear line. That is the shirt. This plays into what you were saying. I'm a big bandana believer, especially in the bush. Those are the WYLD RYDE t-shirts. It says, “The plan is no plan,” on the front. That is the adventure motto out there. Those are high-quality shirts there. There are these people that are certified so that it doesn't come from a sweat shop and it is ecological.
I started doing gear to promote people going outside. Each time you would wear the gear or any of this, and you take a picture and tag me, you get money off any future gear or classes. My idea with the gear thing is that I don't care about clothes, as you could probably guess. It was a way for me to incentivize people to get outside. That was the whole idea.
Bandana is one of the best tools in the bush. It is underrated. They can do many different things. One of which is to help carry things. You can use it as a vessel for sunscreen. Out here, we have prickly pair. You have seen the paddle cactus. If you are from South America, they cut the guts of the paddle cactus up, and call it nopales, which is like fried cactus. The inside is a gel, and you can pack that in here, tie it up, and bring it with you on your hunt or wherever you are at. It got a nice smell. It's like a gel, almost like aloe. You will take that and dab yourself with it.
Bandanas are one of the best tools in the bush. They’re so underrated, but they can literally do so many different things, one of which is to help carry things.
What is great is that there is this study that came out of Arizona University. High SPF isn't that applicable to human skin. It doesn't matter that much. What matters is constant reapplication. When you are taking that part of the cactus, carrying it with you, and able to constantly reuse it, something from the earth that is growing on the ground around you, rather than this little tube that might run out, you are protecting yourself better. I probably should make a video about it here.
The other one that you probably saw was the aspen powder. I use it a lot when running because you don't have to stop for long and reapply it. The aspen powder is about 10 SPF. You go on there and rub a little bit of the powder off. I usually use it for my face. I have a dark complexion. I don't need it as much on my arms but on my face and chest. You rub some of that powder on there. It is the same thing. You can reapply as you are moving because there are going to be aspen up at there a high elevation. You're not worried and not being dragged down.
It is super easy to get too.
There is nothing else to it. You can't mess it up. It's like the wildlife thing. Animals with good noses will sniff you out if you are wearing sunscreen from a long way away. If you are getting in the water, maybe you're hand fishing or atlatl fishing, and you want to get in there close to the fish, I'm putting this chemical into the water, and I’m immediately washing off.
You can see the oil trail going down. I always wondered, “How does that impact the environment?”
There is a cool movement happening right now. A lot of people are going back toward the earth and going for more simple gestures.
It was more health reasons and trying to be conscious about health. I'm also intrigued by how we lived that long ago. It isn't that long ago, 200 to 300 years ago. It's pretty primitive at that point.
People that your grandparents knew were sustenance hunters. That's how I like to think about it. It's not that long ago. I always think of it like a bridged dictionary, the giant one in the library. Human history is all of the pages, and this way we live now is the last page. We have only been living like this for one page of a massive dictionary. It doesn't even matter if you believe the world is 4,000 or 4 million years old. This lifestyle that we're doing now is super new.
Whether it's the clothes, incentivizing, and giving people money for going outside, that is my mission in life. My mission is to get people to move their bodies and reconnect with nature because I don't think there is anything else that has done more beneficial for me. It can be replicated by everyone. Everyone that I go through that with benefits from being in the bush and moving their body.
I have the same connection. It is the whole reason why I live here. You can easily access so much. There is so much public land space that you can enjoy. I want my kids to experience that too. I feel my best when I'm out on a hike or on an Elk or whatever. You are facing some adversity out there. It's not all easy, but how good you feel afterward and maybe what you have accomplished. It is not even that. It is just connecting with nature a little bit.
I feel like a lot of people go into these areas, and they take a lot for granted. I don't think that they are connecting because I can't count the times that I have seen guys with headphones. They are taken in a beautiful spot and to each his own. If we can almost connect a little bit further, like to stop for a minute and appreciate something. I made a post on my personal page about columbine. I was like, “I don't stop and smell the flowers often, but when I see one of these, it's pretty cool because they are fairly unusual to run across.”
When you see that plant, and you recognize it, it adds that whole another layer. Now it's a two-way street. I and nature are interacting instead of being a visitor. You're like, “I'm part of this.”
If it's giving you something back in return and if it's something that you can eat or whatever, it's the whole reason that I hunt. I'm on this carnivore diet, and I haven't gone to the grocery store to buy anything. It's meat that is in the freezer. It's satisfying when I cook it. I also have a higher respect for it because I don't let any of it go to waste. I cut a lot of the send-you-off and stuff as I'm trimming it before I cook it. I will turn around and cook that. My dog gets that. Zero of it is going to waste.
That is a great thing about dogs. You don't have to worry about waste.
They were like little bears or like garbage disposals.
Are you going to do organ meat?
I eat organ meat all the time. I will eat liver or heart. I don't get into the intestines and stuff. I have eaten kidneys before. I don't know, but mostly liver, heart, and tongue. I'm a big fan of the tongue.
I have eaten lungs, which grosses people out. Also, spleen, kidney.
What do the lungs taste like?
It is chewy. It is not the best organ meat.
The heart is amazing.
It is as good as most steak.
It is as good as a tenderloin.
People are confused about that. It's false information pedaled by different people. I don't know how politics work. The heart is awesome, but I work butchering. I can get a bunch of steaks out of one animal. Let's sell the steaks. I get one heart out of a giant animal. What would we rather say is the good meat to sell? A heart, which we only have one of, or all of these steaks, which we have hundreds of. That is my mind I think about when I'm cutting.
It's a different texture. To me, it's more of a sacred type. It is part of my ritual of honoring animals. It's not the actual consumption of it, but I will take a minute when I'm in the middle of field dressing, and I will hold the heart for a second. I pack that in a separate game bag, the organ meat stuff.
Have you ever done blood?
I have never gotten too heavy into that. I had blood-based broth almost.
What blood was it? Do you know?
I have no idea.
You can do a bunch of different things with blood. People will drink blood. A lot of people mix blood with milk, but what I like to do is fry it. You can fry it, and it comes out with this scrambled egg texture. It sounds gross because it's not here.
When you cook a burger, a steak, or something like that, the blood runs off of it. It turns into brown gravy almost.
We talk about like, “That burger was juicy. That steak was juicy, but I would never touch blood. It is gross.” I’m like, “You said the same thing is cool and gross. That is what we are eating here.”
You are going to have a layer of that on your burger.
It is good for you, and it tastes good. It is versatile. I have not eaten the brains of anything big, but I eat fish brains. I do fish heads too. That is one of my favorites. Out in the bush, you can fish, pull out a fish, cook it, and after you are done, you take the head and the skeleton, put it in a little cup, and let it roast in the fire. That is your midnight oil.
Blood is good for you. It tastes really good, and it's very versatile.
I cook them with the heads on. As soon as the eyes turn white, you know they are done.
When I take that, I leave the head in a pot. You need a fat supply to sleep and move. When you get that late at night, it can help with your body's ability to thermoregulate. The biggest thing people haven't mastered about the bush is thermoregulation and thermodynamics, especially without a tent or sleeping bag. That is a lot of what we are teaching in our classes, whether it's WYLDRYDE or BOSS, which is the school I'll be teaching for coming in a week or so.
A lot of what we are teaching is keeping people warm using the natural materials around you. If you are going out in the bush and you don't have a tent or a sleeping bag, and you got to sleep at 10,000 feet altitude, how are you going to stay warm at night? I would say 99% of people would say, “I don't know.” That is a big concern.
It's good to know that you have that in your back pocket in case you have ever been put in a situation where you need to, or you are testing yourself. Is that the driving force behind you? What Donny does sometimes is, “I'm going out for 30 days with just myself.”
I have always been somebody that likes to accomplish and push myself. It is equal parts nature connection and also, how far can I push my body? Some trips go more one way. Some trips go more the other. I don't think I have announced this yet. This is the official announcement right here. In the summer of 2023, I'm going to try and do the first/fastest barefoot run of the Colorado Trail. It is 500 miles and 90,000 feet in elevation. I'm going to try and run that barefoot. That one is more about pushing yourself. There will be a lot of nature connections.
Do you run barefoot, mostly? I have seen you rock climb barefoot.
I'm barefoot right now for those who can't see. I did bring my dancing shoes, my dress shoes, and my sandals. I do like being barefoot. There are certain times when I need to wear shoes, but I like the way everything feels barefoot or in minimalist shoes, even when I'm racing. We went to Vegas for the Hyrox World Championships. If you guys haven't read that episode with Hunter, that was the one I got to read. I had to wear shoes, but I tried to get more minimalist style shoes because that race is on concrete. That was the only time I had ever raced on concrete. I was typically running on the trails. I guess that's a long-winded answer. Sometimes I wear shoes, and sometimes I don't.
I have heard people say that you feel more connected to nature or something like that when you're barefoot. Do you have some of those feelings?
Any gear you can get rid of, at least personally, the more connected I feel and the more I feel part of the environment. Typically, I have shorts on. Sometimes, I will tie a piece of cloth to hold a water bottle or a few rations. All I will bring is a knife and a bottle. That is when I feel most connected. When I have the least stuff separating me from the environment, I feel most like an animal. I feel like I'm out there to be in that moment and experience what is around me. I'm not necessarily looking at my phone or getting human influence.
Human influence is one thing I talk about a lot. Maybe you are one of them. There is a tiny percentage of people on this earth, particularly in America, who have ever spent 24 hours alone with no human influence. What that means is no book, no Netflix, and no other people. It is just you and your thoughts for 24 hours. The natives used to sit in a circle or sit alone in a circle of rocks. They would refer to it as vision questing, which is making a big comeback now.
When you are alone, and you have no book, nobody to talk to, and no music, your brain does this thing. It is almost psychedelic. You start remembering these things when you were a child, and you were mean to a kid at a barbecue in third grade or somebody you haven't talked to. You need to tell him how grateful you are that you met them. Your brain does all these crazy things that you don't have access to. When all of this is happening around you all the time, it changes the way you think. There are some hunters who have experienced it.
I have experienced it on the level that I have hallucinogenic almost dreams. It is out of body experience that we are vivid. It is like 3 or 4 days into an elk trip. I haven't seen or talked to anybody. All of a sudden, I'm having this dream that's along the lines of a DMT or an ayahuasca-type adventure. One of the reasons why I enjoy going is that disconnect. Granted, I do have stuff that I can look at. I can take a picture. Sometimes I'm navigating from my phone, marking some waypoints with a satellite deal.
I do have some technology around me, but I tend not to use it or put it in a power-saving mode. There is no real concept. One of the things that I held most sacred at that time is there was no set schedule like, “I don't have to be anywhere by noon. I don't have to be at the studio by 1:00 PM to do a show.” It is sun up to sundown, and trying to accomplish one thing. That's it.
Isn't that wild?
Maybe you find some snacks along the way or whatever. It is a huge reset for me. It makes you appreciate what you have a little bit more. It makes me more connected to the family because I realize that I miss them more. When you do have all these distractions, maybe you don't realize you miss somebody. If you're looking at hot chicks all day on Instagram shaking their asses, you might not miss your wife.
I get a little mini dose of that with the meditation breathwork thing I was telling you about. What you were hitting on there is gratitude. When I come off of my solos, I usually call my mom right away, and I'm borderline emotional, like, “Mom, I love you. I don't tell you enough.” Have you heard of Wim Hof?
I know who he is, but you might need to elaborate a little bit.
Wim Hof is super legend. He does cold exposure in breathing therapy. He lost his wife. She killed herself. His life has been about how to fight things, whether it is a physical ailment or mental depression, using the cold treatment and breathing techniques. I do a lot of cold treatments on most days. I do breathing every day. There is a video online. You could put Wim Hof Method Breathing. It's him right there.
I do some version of pranayama breathing like this every single day. What it does is that gratitude thing that hits you when you are alone and nothing else is happening. That is what I get from this. I will send texts immediately after. You get high from it. There was a comment on here that I saw that got a bunch of likes. It said, “I can't believe the government hasn't outlawed this yet because of how high I have.”
You are doing this while you are doing a cold plunge. It is like an ice bath.
It could be while I'm getting cold. A lot of times, I will lock my room. I always want to make sure that there is no possible way someone can come in and distract me because I’m in my mode. I would say, “Lock yourself somewhere.” He says not to do it in water. I always do it in water. If you are reading this, don't do it in water. You can drown, but I don't push my breath holds while I'm in water because part of this is breath holds. You can do it in cold water or in your bed.
Explain the sequence to me because I started doing something similar. Have you heard of Andrew Huberman?
Yes.
I want to hear your side of it first, and I will tell you where I'm at. What does a cycle look like for you, how long does it take, and what is happening?
This whole thing started when I was going on a trip in the bush for two weeks. This guy, as we were driving our van up here, I had never met him in my life. He is breathing, and it sounds like he is snoring while he is awake. Fast forward, this is my friend, Guy. He is one of my role models. He does this every day, and he was way ahead of the curve with all this stuff. He learned Japanese. He skateboards and surfs every day. He is the biggest legend I have ever met, but he was adamant about meditation and this breathing stuff.
I started trying it. The way that video works, you will do either 30 or 40 breaths. That would be around. One breath would be a huge breath in, like max breath in, and let it go. You are not pushing all your air out. Eventually, after 30 or 40 breaths, you are over-oxygenating. Your entire body is filled with oxygen. That 30th breath, you let it out, and you hold. The 1st round is 1 minute, the 2nd round is 1.5 minutes, and the 3rd round is 1.5 minutes.
This is something that takes four minutes.
The whole video is eleven minutes. I could piddle around doing nothing for eleven minutes. There is no time excuse that I can say, “I don't have time to do my breathwork now.” You are full of shit. Why are you lying to yourself? Knock it out. I have regretted not doing it, but I never regretted doing it.
Don’t make excuses for missing to do your breathwork. Knock it out because you’ll never regret doing it. You’ll regret not doing it.
I do something that is similar to that. I picked this up from Andrew Huberman. Shout out to him. He is a neuroscientist, but he got this cool edge because he is a former punk rock skater-type dude from the Bay Area. He was a professional skater for a while. He is a super great guy. It’s what he studied from the neuro standpoint and how different chemicals are released in your body and all this different stuff. Since I've changed my diet, my sleeping habits have been awesome. It has been incredible. That has been changing. It has been a drastic change.
Listening to Andrew Huberman, I started something a bit of a ritual. It is around the same time, for some reason. I was like, “I'm going to try this.” I love coffee, americano, espresso, or something like that. My old routine used to be to get up, make coffee, drink coffee, go outside and do something, or go and work out.
I reversed that order. The first thing that I do when I wake up is to go outside and get 5 to 10 minutes of natural sunlight. I try to get up when the sun is coming up. It is something about the yellow and blue contrast. You can't get it unless you are seeing a sunrise. It sets off dopamine and all these different chemicals in your body that we have been doing primitively for hundreds of years, thousands of years, or millions of years, who knows.
It makes me feel great. All of a sudden, I don't need coffee. I drink coffee now at 10:00 or 11:00. I already worked out. I have already done all that. It's a bonus to get me through the day. I try to do that as the sun is setting. Who doesn't appreciate a good sunset? We are even getting stiller once. It takes 5 to 10 minutes. There is that portion of it, and I have noticed a change in my attitude drastically, in the way that I feel going throughout the day. Maybe it's a mental thing, or there is nothing to it, but there is some science behind it. Your brain releases all these different chemicals, dopamine and adrenaline. What causes adrenaline? I don't know. I'm not a neuroscientist.
Epinephrine and norepinephrine.
The other thing that I have been doing is NSR yoga. Have you heard of this?
No.
It is along the lines of what you were talking about with breathwork. I don't do the whole cycle because you are supposed to listen to a YouTube thing and it is 20 or 15 minutes long. It is like a deep rest for your body and nervous system through breathing techniques and awareness. You are supposed to do it laying down or sitting someplace where you can relax. The ideal spot in doing NSR yoga-type thing would be a float tank.
I have listened to 1 or 2 to get the general concepts down. Now when I go and lay in bed, I do this breathwork for five minutes. It is relaxing, and I get to sleep like you wouldn't believe. You are taking huge deep ten breaths in, but letting it all out completely. If you don't push all the air out of your lungs, you won't feel this. Your body goes into total relaxation. It makes all your muscles decompress, and at one point, you stop breathing.
You do that ten times, and you breathe normally, noticing your breath. You go back, and you do that cycle again. The second time around is even better. The third time, at the end of that cycle, in between normal breathing and cycling back into a deep breath in and out, you hold your breath for as long as you can. It is like a reset. It is relaxing. You almost get like a euphoric type of feeling a little bit.
I like that both Wim and Huberman have done a good job at this, which is, “Let's back this up with science.” That is why I got a lot of respect front for Wim because I naturally don't believe anything anyone tells me. I'm like, “That sounds like bullshit.” I read some of these peer-reviewed studies that Wim Hoff was doing. I was like, “There is probably something to this.”
I listened to Huberman’s podcast. He was talking about dopamine, different hormone receptors, and the effects of breathwork. It was interesting. He called it a gratitude practice. He said, “A gratitude-focused practice has physiological differences in the body.” They are doing studies with it. You can see what happens. It makes sense. When you sit down and think about all the things you are grateful for, you feel better. For me, that is not a stretch. The reality is that people who are happy people tend to be great.
It is like that whole five-minute journal thing. If you think about it on a regular basis, you are going to be more grateful for it. It is common sense. You have to think about what you are grateful for before you can have gratitude for it.
That is part of the nature thing. It is a full circle. You have to be in nature to understand that gratitude anymore. You are not going to be thankful for the mountains if you never go to the mountains and you stay in the city. You are never going to experience that world and have that gratitude.
That is one reason why I have taken a little bit of a different approach here. It is to try to help educate people. I'm no expert in anything, first off, but I try to help educate people on how to connect with nature and how to treat it a little bit more so they can get out and enjoy it more. The more that you enjoy it, the more respect you will have for it. It is the premise.
I have that same thing. For me, it has been stripping away things. The less gear I have, the more in tune I get. That's why I love hand fishing now so much. I grew up, and I think about it often. I was fishing all the time and always thinking, “What gear was going to give me the most fish?” It is this constant obsession that I was thinking about the rod, the bait, and the tackle. Now I can go into a stream and use my hands. I can pull a fish out. That is a different level of connection for me that gets me so stoked to go.
You are dialing it back as much as you have, as far as not taking stuff out with your safety gear. You carried a knife and a water bottle when you were out most of the time. Have you ever had any close calls or any time where you had to call for some help or any situation where you thought, “I could be in some serious trouble?”
I never ever want to encourage people to be dangerous. It is important to know your limits. Donny and I talk about the first skill. Donny talks about stone points. He talks about the first skill for humans. That is where he started. My first skill is moving on my feet. That is how I think of early African plains hunters. They would like a persistent hunt. We can run further than any other animal on earth on a hot day. That is our only natural advantage as humans. My whole thing was, “Let me build up this range where I can run far on little food or water.”
WYLD RYDE Outdoors: We can run farther than any other animal on earth on a hot day. That is our only natural advantage as humans.
The focus for me, in the beginning, was how I can get as deep as possible into the backcountry. It has got to be on my feet. How do I build up to that point? Eventually, you use less gear. I was never a gear guy in the beginning because I didn't have any money. I still don't have money. I am progressively overloaded. It wasn't like I decided one day. I don't know anything about the bush. I'm going to run 100 miles in the desert and see what happens. There is a steady buildup of knowledge and ability there.
When you say you run long distances, are you running ultra-type distances or marathons? Do you track any of that?
I have started racing as a side effect. I raced in the Spartan Race in 2022. I got second in that and raced in the Hyrox World Championship, which I had never done Hyrox before. I qualified for the world championships, which was a cool experience. That is out of my wheelhouse, but I enjoyed it. I have built up a fitness base being training in the mountains.
I'm carrying rocks up the mountains. I’m lifting up heavy rocks and picking up trees. I do a lot of pull-ups on trees. I try to add that to my nature connection thing. It has been a buildup. I have done a lot of ultra-distance stuff. I raced in the Ultra World Championship for Spartan in 2021. That was a 24-hour race. Whoever runs the furthest wins. That was in Telluride. It was pretty brutal. Everyone does nine miles.
Is that an obstacle course built in? There is some lifting or pulling. Spartan is crazy. There is even some weapon stuff.
Everyone runs the first nine miles. This is for the 24-hour championship particularly. After that, it's a six-mile loop for the rest of the time. During those miles, let's say 6 miles, there are 25 obstacles. One of the obstacles was carrying a 50-pound bucket down the mountain and back up. While you are running all these miles, you got to do all this crazy stuff.
You got to throw a spear and hit a target. Any obstacle that you fail, you have to pay in burpees. If you miss an obstacle, you got to do 30 burpees. Spartan is brutal. It is one of those things. Doing hard shit is good for you. At the moment, this sucks. You might think to yourself, “What the hell am I doing?” After it, you were like, “I am a monster. I'm a beast. I'm capable. I'm ready to sign up for the next one.” That is the feeling you get.
Are you doing that in 2022?
I'm in a low right now with racing. My life is back and forth between do I want to focus on the racing and fitness racing aspect or do I want to spend all my time in the bush doing survival and teaching survival. There is crossover there, but you got to pick sometimes. For the next three months, I will be in the bush. I'm going to teach a 28-day course, and I found this cave that I'm going to try and move into. Apparently, the landlord is tough. He is a pack rat. There is a bunch of pack rats living in there. I'm going to smoke him out. That's my plan right now. I got to be back here for my sister's wedding, which is across the street.
I have to be back here for that. That is the end of elk season. I will stop and elk hunt on the way back. Once I get back here in the fall, it will be training time. I'm going to do a double race. I'm going to do Hyrox in LA, and I'm going to run Spartan Elite the next morning. I'm going to do back-to-back Hyrox and Spartan. Shout out to Chris Orlowski. There is a girl who is the Hyrox World Champion, the girl version of Hunter. She did back-to-back races like that. I was like, “I want to do that.” I had her on my podcast.
What is her name?
Kris Rugloski. She moved to Colorado. You guys got to have her on. She is super rad. She is like a badass chick. She is dominating the fitness racing world right now, and she is mountain tough. She asked me to do this Nolan's 14. Have you heard of it?
No.
It is 14 consecutive 14,000-foot peaks. You do it continuously. A lot of people do it at the fastest known time in FKT. It is 95 miles and 60,000 feet in elevation. She does a lot of the big mountain races, and she moved to Boulder, Colorado Springs. She is a tough chick.
You have your own podcast. Let's talk about what you guys cover on there. It's what we have been talking about.
The way you structure this is similar to the way I started mine.
It is free-form. I didn't send you a script like, “These are the questions I'm going to ask you.”
There is no scripting. Mine is just rolling the dice.
It's more of a hangout like I'm getting to know you.
You want to be like, “Who is this person?” You gather what you can in a quick session and hang out with the person, and chop it up. This, first of all, is sick because this studio is like something I would dream of. This is awesome. You guys did a great job here. I felt like everyone was down at the beginning of COVID. Everything was negative.
Everyone was down at the beginning of COVID. Everything was so negative. But COVID was great for running out in the bush and having a great time.
For me, COVID was great. I was out in the bush, running around, having a great time, and I'm like, “How do I spread some positivity and hopefulness in the world?” My idea was like, “Let's do a virtual podcast. I don't have to get in front of anyone and no disease concerns.” I started chatting with my friends. Donny was in episode one. There is a bunch of outdoor legends, whether they are survival or fitness racing. These are people, selfishly, I wanted to talk to.
That's pretty much what this is. As much as we are trying to provide something, for me, it is more of a selfish thing. I want to talk to interesting people. I want to hang out with interesting people. I enjoy the time that I spend here. It is seldom that I walk out of here and go, “God, that sucked.” It is like never.
There have maybe been 1 or 2 that didn't go well or something. It wasn't a bad experience. I still would take that experience regardless. I didn't hit it off with somebody the right way, or I said something to offend somebody the wrong way or something, but that is part of conversating. We are caught up in this these days with a phone. Even though there is all this technology around us, there are multiple cameras here. We got microphones and headphones on and everything, but we are still having a conversation. It is a lost art.
Especially the long-form version of it. I am surprised. I haven't noticed the mic or the headphones. It sounds clean. I have been doing all mine. You guys can look it up. It's called Who The WYLD Things Are. It has been great. It started with COVID. It was all virtual, but I would like to sit down like this, where it is like straight-up person-to-person communication. Some of those folk live hundreds of miles away.
That is one reason why we have dove into the virtual world because I was trying to set stuff up to where we were going to travel to them, and they were going to travel to us. It got to be too much sometimes. We still do try to pursue that. In-person is much better, but, in the end, I didn't want to miss out on a conversation or somebody that I wanted to talk to by having that barrier up there. We have an awesome platform to do it on. We can talk after the show. I can give you all that information. It's RiversideFM. It is inexpensive. It does some editing for you. It is pretty sweet.
It is way better than Zoom or one of those things. It is an incredible platform. I was also waiting for the quality to come along because that was a big thing for me. I didn't want to have something that sounds like somebody's in their bathroom recording on their iPhone or something or the internet lag. That was hard. That is a hard thing to get over. It's not the same as you and I sitting here. Plus we can have a whiskey together.
In-person is an easy place to lure people too.
There is a way better connection too. If you are staring at the screen, it is almost like I get more in my own head. It's like, “Am I hearing what he is saying? What am I going to say next?” With this, I'm just listening and talking. I’m trying not to interrupt.
I always wanted to bring mine to this level. This isn't like any show. You guys do a good. This is a professionally done show. This place is legit.
We put some work into it. At the same time, I'm trying to do it at that level. I want to be at that professional level of it. I can do more of it and spend more time doing this. I genuinely enjoy it and am curious to find out about people like yourself and people that interest me. That is where the selfish part comes in.
Whom do I want to talk to?
Other people who are reading it. That is the crazy thing. I was like, “Who would want to read my dumb ass?” It's not that. It's more about the people that I have in the guest seat and the conversations that we have. That is what I figured out.
We call it the KPI, the Key Performance Indicator. When I'm thinking about my podcast, the most important thing is who is sitting across from me on my podcast. I have been lucky with the guests I have gotten. Most of it is because I will reach out to anyone. I am a dufus already. I don't care about embarrassing myself. I have reached out to huge A-listers, all the way down to friends and everyone in between. Some people have said, “Yes.” I would have never expected it. You have to have that, like, “Do you want to sit down and have a conversation?” Most people are nice and want to connect and get to know each other.
It's a great way for people to portray themselves if they are true to themselves and not putting on some façade. You will be figured out quickly on a show or multiple shows. This long-form conversation is the best form of social media to represent yourself much more than a photo or whatever. I can look at your Instagram page, and I'm like, “Ryan looks cool. He does all this cool stuff,” but I don't have this connection until we sit down.
This isn't the whiskey talking. This is for real. Until we sit down and have a conversation, you look somebody in the eye and share a moment with them. It builds a bond too, because 98% of the people that have set in that seat that you're in, I'm now friends with. I have 98% more people to keep up with and like, “Check in.” Show or not, I'm still talking to a lot of these people on the phone. We are helping each other out. We are checking in.
It gives people a little bit of hope for humanity. With all this BS that we hear about, podcasts are typically positive notions. People were talking as friends, like a real strip-down version. There is no script. I met you outside on the deck the first time. It is two good guys hanging out and getting to know each other.
Podcasts are typically a very positive notion. It's like people talking as friends. It’s a real strip-down version. There is no script. It's just good guys hanging out, getting to know each other, and sharing experiences.
I don't think that you can dive into it. If you're in a crowded ballroom or something like that, there are all these distractions. This is much more private. Even though there are hundreds of people reading this or thousands or however many, it is that download this thing. You don't notice the microphones or the headphones. It is more like we are having a conversation.
I don't ever think about like, “What am I going to sound like?” I do. I go back and listen to something because I do some of my own audio editing to critique myself. Filler words drive me nuts. I'm bad about it. I have done it to make myself better. I do critique myself, but other than that, I don't think about not speaking about how I feel, what I want to say, or what I want to convey. I'm not trying to be like, “I wonder what people will think of this.” I'm just talking to you.
I dodged one question earlier when I realized I had any close calls. I don't know if you can pull this up, but there was a video I put on YouTube. That is a funny one. My YouTube is a WYLDRYDETV. There was a good black bear encounter that I got. We were going on this trip. My best friend, Darrell, was coming with me. He had never done a backpacking trip or any trip in the bush. We were going through the rainforest. I was like, “Let's make this even.” It was a long-distance trip, and he is from Detroit. He has never been in the woods. I was like, “I will do it barefoot, and it will slow me down. We will be at a good pace together. I did a 40-mile barefoot trip with him, and I ran into a bear.
Who is filming? Are you filming yourself?
I film all this myself and edit it. There is a little build-up to it. It's hard to tell here because he is on the GoPro. We are eight feet away right there. He is on that route.
How did that happen?
We were way in the bush. Did you grow up with horses or anything like that?
We never had them ourselves, but I grew up around a lot of them.
When they have a broken leg, you pretty much put them down. It is the nature of the beast. They won’t survive a broken leg. When you are in a situation like this, and you are trail walking 40 miles away from civilization. Even then, you are in a super remote town. You got to put the horse down to honor the horse. You can't let them sit there and suffer. They were out there, shot the horse, and pushed him right next to the trail because they couldn't move. That bear got on it and was getting territorial. Thank God there was one other person out there that was walking back, and he was like, “Three switchbacks up from now, you guys got to cross this bear.” He is on a dead horse. He was guarding the food. I'm like, “Darrell, are you ready for this?”
When horses have broken legs, you pretty much put them down. It's just the nature of the beast.
This is Darrell's first time in the woods.
It is his first backpacking trip ever.
Did he have a good time?
He loved it. I met the girl on this right there on the trail. Her name's Lauren. She was the one that had crossed the bear by herself. She was a girl solo backpacking because the guy she was with deuced out on her. She crossed the bear alone. I'm like, “You are badass.” We have been best friends since that day. She has been in Colorado. She is a big rock climber. There is a good close call for you.
You are going to run into that stuff. You are trying to be prepared and as much as you can for something like that. For me, it is carrying a little bit of medical stuff. Do you carry anything, or are you going to look to natural ailments?
It depends. For classes, in general, I'm carrying more gear. A lot more of that is medical gear. Part of that is to be compliant with whatever rules are set out by the authoritative body. You have to get your certifications for wilderness responder first aid, and you got to have certain things on you. For Boulder Outdoor Survival School, we carry full med kits, sat phones, and things like that. When I go out on my own, I admittedly don't do any of that. Sometimes, I will bring certain medical things, but it's pretty rare. I don't carry a sat phone or any electronics, which I know is not that smart. I have been berated for this, and I know I'm wrong.
That is also part of your mental connection. It's part of that disconnect.
It is partially money because I don't have a lot of that. Those things are expensive. There are hundreds of dollars, and you get a pay every month that do something. There are situations where it is useful, but in most situations, it's a false sense of comfort. The reality is self evac or a partner evac is going to be the answer. The right answer most of the time is to get the hell out of the woods and it's going to be on your own accord.
To think that you are going to hit a button and somebody like Superman is going to swoop you out of the woods. Sorry, it doesn't usually work like that. They are hours and hours away. The guy I saved almost died. There was a hot day. I'm running with nothing. I didn't even have water. It’s just my sandals and no shirt. I'm deep in this canyon. I find this guy on the trail. He is about to die.
It was a day hike. I didn't realize it was going to be that hot. I had no water. I ran four laps to the trailhead and back to him, carrying water back and forth as the police, the firemen, and the paramedics sat at the trailhead because they said it was too dangerous to go in. I ran four laps back and forth while they handed me plastic bottles like this and said, “Go get him.”
Why would it be too dangerous for them to go in?
They talk to their police chief. They called search and rescue.
It was too dangerous for the officers to go in. They wanted search and rescue to go in after him.
They also wanted the firefighters. The firefighters got down there in my second lap. I had already run twelve miles by this point, and I had no water. I'm trying to make sure that I'm not putting myself in danger. Frank is still up in the mountains. Frank is the guy's name that got stranded. I would hide him in the shade. His lips are dry and puckered. He is not sweating, and he is completely shutting down. He can only walk 50 meters at a time. I got to find a shady spot in the desert and get more water and run back up.
At some point, I called the police, and the firefighters were there. They are doing this gear check because my sister is at the bottom. She dropped me off there to go for a run. The firefighters did a full gear check for a half hour, and they all changed. They took off all their firefighting stuff. By the time the firefighters got there, they had only walked half a mile past the trailhead. I had already got the guy out. For them to get there, he probably would have been dead. Search and rescue never showed up. These things are great. There are people that are meant to help you, but it's ultimately up to you.
Search and rescue are great. These people are meant to help you, but sometimes they never show up. It's ultimately up to you.
You are self-reliant and it's also entered your own risk. You can't assume that somebody is going to come to rescue you because you have an SOS button on a device.
You should use those devices. They are useful.
I use the shit out of mine as far as marking waypoints and stuff, but as far as navigation, I try not to use it because I don't want to be reliant on it. If I ever need to find my way back to camp, I don't. From a kid, I was raised to look at certain landmarks and pay attention to your surroundings when you are going in is probably the biggest thing.
Especially if you are talking about local stuff, you can use landmarks and macro markers. Those are good to practice. There are tons of differences with land navigation. I could go and talk about this for hours, like in its own episode, but the mapping compass is lost. That is a lot of what we practice now in teaching these courses is topography, map, and compass. That stuff gets a lot more serious when you think about traveling over big expenses. If you miss by an inch on a map, that is, 1 to 24,000, you might have missed by half a mile. It's good to practice using macro markers. Ultimately land navi using a map and compass is a good skill to know.
I always carry at least some topo map for the area that I'm in, in my backpack. The garment thing does have it on the phone. You can zoom in, mark stuff, and whatever, but the map is always in my backpack and I always have a compass too.
You might be in the minority now. I don't think there are a lot of backcountry hunters like you that are applying those skills.
What if your phone dies? You won't probably last a couple of days. It is too much to be relying on. You could lose your backpack or the map, too but think of as many tools as you can have to be safe.
Shaping up on those skills, you are never going to regret knowing land navigation. You sure might regret not having land navigation skills. For the primitive survivalists, a lot of people are like, “You probably think like the world is ending, and you got a bunker in your basement. I'm like, “I'm not that type of guy.”
That is another one of those misconceptions.
We are hopeful. Things are going pretty well. I like to know these things for nature connection in case I ever need them.
If the world is ending, you guys are going to be the guys that survive, honestly. Ryan, this has been a lot of fun. We got to wrap this thing up. We have been at it for a little while. You got some stuff to do. I do as well. Cheers.
Thanks for coming in. This is super rad.
Before we get you out here, if you got a few more minutes, if somebody wants to come to one of your survival schools, whatever you are doing with Donny, your podcast, your YouTube channels, or social sites, let's get all that out. Where would people, if they want to come to one of these classes that you are teaching on survival methods, and what are you guys covering?
The best place to find me probably that I use is Instagram. You can find me at Wyld_Ryde_Outdoors. I'm teaching mainly wilderness skills. That could be anything from foraging wild edibles, building shelters, sourcing water, hunting, fishing, and all the things that you would do in the bush with your friends. We had a couple of courses in 2022. They went great. All packed out and sold out. That has been awesome. I’m thankful for that. You guys are more than welcome to join us in a class we will be doing.
I will be leaving to teach in Utah for the next couple of months. That school is called Boulder Outdoor Survival School. It's one of the oldest schools and most respected schools in the world. You guys are more than welcome to check them out. It is Boss-Inc.com. My YouTube is WYLDRYDETV. My podcast is Who The WYLD Things Are? I had a great time, and that time honestly flew by.
It went by so fast. You have to come back for sure. We will have you back anytime. Are you going to be in Colorado, or are you leaving Colorado? What are your plans?
I will be here for the next week or so. I’m spending some time with family, and I will be in the bush for the next several months. Pretty much no technology and teaching courses. I’m doing some solo trips and solo elk hunts, which will be pretty sweet. I made my own bow and arrow.
Next time, we got to get into some archery stuff.
We could do a whole episode about that.
I'm a fanatic about it, but a bit more on the compound side.
Pick your poison. It is all great.
Go give Ryan a follow. Check out some of the cool shit that he is doing. Thanks, everybody, for reading.
Important Links
Ryan Maguire - Instagram
Wildland Firefighter - Past Episode
Last Episode - Past Episode
Hunter - Past Episode
Wim Hof Method Breathing – YouTube
YouTube - 40 Miles Through the Rainforest Barefoot! video
WYLDRYDETV – YouTube